


Heart-Shaped Box

by epersonae



Series: The Director [12]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: BoB-era, Gen, Memory, Stolen Century Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 19:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12778062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: The Director needs to find something in storage; Lucretia misses her family.





	Heart-Shaped Box

She’s going looking for the invitation to Wonderland. Just saying the word fills her mind with dread. She thought she'd lost too much before going to that place, but she'd had no idea how much more there was to lose. 

Finding the invitation means going into the closet full of boxes. The boxes she avoids assiduously, most of the time. There's too many memories, too many reminders. Most of the time, she feels like she's already carrying too many memories, it's not good for her to seek out even more. 

And objects hold memory. Always have. Which is why she keeps her office so spare. There's the painting, of course, but she keeps that as a rebuke as much as anything else. 

Nearly everything else that didn't get left on the Starblaster is in a box in the closet behind her secret office. 

Late at night she goes down there and reads down the labels on the stacked boxes. The Wonderland invite isn't very far down; it's close to all the materials from the founding of the Bureau. Blueprints of domes. (Plus some very old sketches of the domes of Tessaralia, she'd held onto those as inspiration for so long, not knowing how they would come in handy.)

She has what she needs, the specific object that she'll share with Taako, Merle, and Magnus tomorrow. (For sure tomorrow, no more putting things off.) And yet, and yet. She doesn't want to leave this trove of objects. She wants for just a moment to live in the past that she gave up. So easily, it seems in retrospect; how had she thought she could possibly live without for so long? She hadn't thought it would be so long. 

There's a box entirely full of wooden ducks. She doesn't open it. There's too many tears, she can feel them pricking at her eyes already. 

Below that, the box simply labeled  _ Clothes _ . Another person, another world, and these would simply be items out of season, sweaters in summer, flimsy dresses in winter. But she knows. Jackets and robes enough for five to wear. Two sets missing. And hers folded on the top. 

She doesn't take out Magnus’s, deliberately doesn't seek out that familiar weight and scent. But she does remove her own robe from the box, shakes it out. The smell of it is musty, clothes in a box for a decade. Preserved well, permanent spells keep these boxes clean and undisturbed, but still, the enclosed air had its own feel. 

She slips her arms into the sleeves; it still fits, mostly. It feels like something that belonged to another person, though. She hasn't been Lucretia in years. Madame Director wears blue, wears layers, carries a staff instead of a journal. Lucretia wore this robe. Lucretia, with her head on Lup's shoulder. Lucretia, with her arm in Taako’s. Lucretia, resting against Magnus’s chest. 

She sets the box on the floor. Five sets of clothes. Davenport’s tiny jacket. Dirt smudges - how? - still on Merle's. The robe and jacket combo that Taako wore with such flair. And finally, always, Magnus’s jacket that had rested so many times around her shoulders. All that red fabric is piled around her. 

She folds her legs and settles to the floor, letting it cover her legs and pulling it up to her chest, up over her shoulders. She lets the textures and the smells flood her with sense memory: no thoughts, nothing specific, just the feel of her loves, the loves she let go, the loves she pushed away. Someday, she whispers to the (almost) empty room. Someday they’ll all be together again.


End file.
